21

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

This literature review focuses on those writings in the field of public

administration that have addressed the citizen’s role in governance. I have

found the literature to be a diverse offering of a variety of insights and opinions

mostly indifferent or hostile to the idea of citizen involvement. Even though the

idea of citizen participation has been discussed, especially in the sixties and

seventies, this review will reveal that a model for citizenship in the full Aristotelian

sense of partnership in governance in administration is lacking. The literature

will show on the whole that the citizen is seen as an individual seeking something

in return for his participation--and mostly in an indirect way. By contrast,

Aristotle articulated the fact that a citizen has two roles to play in the public

arena--the personal and the public. Dewey also sees the citizen function in a

dual capacity--on the one hand, serving as the voice for the common good and,

on the other, serving to receive personal benefits. The public administration

literature is devoid of the citizens’ public role in a democracy. It appears that the

public administration literature on the citizens’ role concentrates on citizens

seeking redress from government or pursuing government subsidy, rights, and/or

privileges for individual or interest group benefit.

In 1968, Judith V. May was asked by Professor Aaron Wildavsky of the

University of California at Berkeley to write a background paper for a conference

he would be attending on “Citizen Involvement in Urban Affairs,” in essence,

summarizing what is known about citizen participation. According to May, she

22

found little “in the existing literature on participation . . . .”1 Even the case-studies

had “severe limitations.”2 As a staff member of the Oakland Project, she

observed the Oakland poverty and Model Cities program. In writing her review

and subsequently after many attempts to re-write, she found that she remained

critical of the works of others.

Democratic Theories

The organizational foundations of what we have come to know as

Classical Democracy occurred during the Fifth and Fourth Centuries, B.C.,

according to Herodotus. This ancient or classical model will be introduced and

discussed in Chapter IV in the historical development of citizenship and

community. This discussion in Chapter II will focus on the democratic theories

after the American and French revolutions.

Carole Pateman leads us to look at democratic theory to find clues as to

why the void exists in public administration literature. In her book, Participation

and Democratic Theory, she outlines succinctly and distinctly the dilemma we

find ourselves in the discussion of democratic theory and participation. She also

came to the same conclusion of others that citizen participation may have been

popular in the sixties and seventies, especially among students, however,

political theorists of the time found the concept of citizen participation as a myth

promulgated by classical theorists on democracy. Democracy theorists, such as

Mosca and Michaels, were among the first to state that participatory democracy

was an impossibility.3 It was Joseph Schumpeter, the economist, who declared

that the democratic theory needed to be revised.4 Berelson wrote in Voting

(1954) that the problem with the classical theory of democracy is that it focused

on the individual citizen. He favored limited participation and apathy as a

positive force in serving to counter any factions or disagreements.5 Robert Dahl,

in A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956) and Hierarchy, Democracy and

Bargaining in Politics and Economics (1956), proposes a modern theory of

23

democracy. He believes in a form of polyarchy that places the rule of authority in

multiple minorities. He supports his argument by stating individuals have the

power to switch their allegiance from one leader to another. This gives the

assurance that leaders will be held accountable and responsive to citizens.6 G.

Sartori, in his book Democratic Theory (1962), concludes that we do not have to

worry about citizen’s apathy. He believed that the democratic ideal needed to be

played down and not emphasized. So he, too, fell in the same category as

stating that the classical theory of democracy expressing maximum participation

was a ‘myth.’7 H. Eckstein in his book, A Theory of Stable Democracy (1966),

focuses on the importance of maintaining stability in government. This stability

can be attained by steering away from a pure democracy towards a “balance of

disparate elements” and a “healthy element of authoritarianism.”8

The critics of the contemporary theory of democracy, as Pateman came to

call it, agree that the classical theorists had been misunderstood. Pateman,

having exposed the so-called myth of the classical theorists and the modern,

contemporary theorists of democracy, leads us to re-defining democracy again

with the intention of including maximum and authentic participation. Pateman re-

introduces her readers to the thinking of J. S. Mill and Rousseau. Rousseau is

more an expounder of participatory democracy to mean what Pateman calls a

“participatory society.”9 The purpose of the citizen’s role in participation is more

than to maintain a stable representative government as John Stuart Mill implies.

It is Pateman who declares that the “critics of contemporary theory of democracy

have never explained exactly what the role of participation in the earlier theories

is or why such a high value was placed upon it in some theories.”10 However, L.

Davis (1964) tells us that the earlier theories of participatory democracy were

very ambitious because it included educating the public as a governmental

responsibility. He added that the theories left open an unfinished agenda.11

Davis felt that education together with political activity in the broad spectrum

needed to be included. G. D. H. Cole developed his theory of participatory

democracy as it relates to an industrialized society in the form of civic guilds. His

24

democratic theory of Guild Socialism is a “theory of association.”12

Rousseau, Mill, and Cole’s theory of participatory democracy “is built

round the central assertion that individuals and their institutions cannot be

considered in isolation from one another.”13 As this paper briefly discusses the

theory of democracy, it must be pointed out again that theorists such as

Schumpeter propelled the discussion away from true democracy. This tenor of

academic orthodoxy on the subject of democratic theory steered many

academicians in the vortex of a paternalistic form of democracy. Many theorists

have attempted to steer the course towards a more centrist view. This literature

review will demonstrate how far off political theorists and public administration

theorists have been thrown off course. Instead of expressing themselves from

the perspective of the citizen, the theorists speak from the public administrator’s

perspective, all in the name of service on behalf of the people.

Organization, Political Science, and Public Administration Theorists

Political scientists, economists, and political sociologists since 1776 up to

1850 have been writing about citizen participation for a long time. On the other

hand, according to May, organization theorists and public administrators--the

group on which I focus here--had just become involved in the subject. Since the

organization theorists and public administrators are a diversely-identified group,

some overlap between the different disciplines occurs, but on the whole, the

public administration literature is the focus.

In answering his own question as to why there was dissatisfaction with

current opportunities for public participation, Herbert Kaufman responded:

Fundamentally, because substantial (though minority) segments ofthe population apparently believe the political, economic, and socialsystems have not delivered to them fair--even minimally fair--shares of the system’s benefits and rewards, and because theythink they cannot win their appropriate shares in those benefits andrewards through the political institutions of the country as these are

25

now constituted.14

Kaufman directs our attention to the fact that the “new demands for participation

have centered primarily on administrative agencies.”15 The focus is on public

administration and also on public administrators and other public officials.

Charles Lindblom focuses on public administrators and officials rather than

citizens (voters). Lindblom and Berelson focus on how decision makers resolve

conflicts among competing groups rather than on the effects on the recipients of

the decision and how the decisions were reached.16

William C. Loring, Frank L. Sweetser, and Charles F. Ernst believe that

citizen participation should be used for certain policy goals to be achieved; for

example, urban renewal. On the other hand, James Q. Wilson states that

“participation of certain groups may jeopardize urban renewal”17 policies. Junius

Williams prepared a paper for the National Academy of Public Administration, in

1970, and in essence, “used citizen participation in order to alter the city’s

housing policy. . . . He strove for personal and organizational integration in order

to facilitate the achievement of his goal, not as an end in itself, proving that

public participation does not replace public policy in solving the problems of the

poor. . . .”18 These discussions of citizen participation were seen from the

administrator’s perspective as serving the purposes of the public administrator.

In discussing the negative conclusions of public choice theory as applied

to the Third World, John D. Montgomery feels that the theory proposes the fact

that when community action is practiced, the fruits of their labor are “taken over

by the rich and powerful.”19 However, he, too, concludes that “popular

participation is certainly not crucial for all policy actions, but it becomes so when

governments want to change public behavior.”20 Once again, government is

seen as coopting citizens in order to change public behavior or achieve a goal.

The values inherent in the premise of citizen participation in a democracy are

overlooked.

26

Democratic Workplace Theorists/Practices

Relying on the works of Maslow and Rogers, Chris Argyris believes that

“nonhierarchical structures provide settings which encourage integrating

individual and organizational goals.”21 These are democratic settings that

promote self-responsibility, self-control, self-reliability, commitment, and

dependability. In discussing participation in the workplace, McGregor (1960)

exclaims that participation is a highly “misunderstood idea.”22 However,

participation does depend on a positive environment for it to be practiced by all

employees. Sawtell (1968) adds to this definition that the processes must be in

place for individuals, other than managers, to have input in decision making.

Lammers (1967) stresses the importance of the legitimacy of participation.

Participation is important when it is legitimized that all concerned are an integral

part of the decision-making processes.23 Likert does not exactly use the term of

participation but alludes to the process as a continuum. He felt that individuals,

in order to be able to deliberate in decision-making, must have the requisite

information. All of these theorists point to the direction of democratic processes,

as well as, democratic environments in physical settings and atmosphere.

Larry Lane and James Wolf state: People who share a community

participate in discussion and decision-making, and also share certain priorities

which define the nature of that community . . . .24 Lane and Wolf explain

community to mean the community of people in the Federal workplace. But one

can expand their ideas to include citizen participation in the development of

community and commitment in governmental service. This reinforces Argyris’

underlying theme that democratic settings encourage the bonding of the

individual and organization in a community sense, not in a cooptative manner.

May concludes that “an agency’s responsiveness to citizen participants

will increase with the agency’s dependence upon them for defining and

implementing its primary functions.”25 It seems that when power is shared, the

public administrator and the citizen participants change the way benefits are

27

distributed. In other words, when public policy decision-making processes are

restricted to a few inside the bureaucracy, the few may sidestep the mission

statements and goals of the agency and supplant democratic processes. The

end result is the proliferation of strategies that obliterate and deconstruct

democratic values of equality, representativeness, and fairness.

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward point out that regionalism is

being imposed upon localities creating another level of bureaucracy. They

conclude that “federal administrations formulate policy in order to create

constituencies as well as to respond to their demands, and changes in political

structure are frequently manipulated with this intent.”26

Social Reform Theorists

An agency established during the reform period in the early part of the

1900's and that enhanced the idea of citizen participation was the New York

Bureau of Municipal Research.27 The focus of the Bureau was twofold--”training

for citizenship and for professional public service.”28 The New York Bureau of

Municipal Research had in all its intent and purposes to fulfill the promise of the

democratic ideal of training citizens on how to participate in the governing

processes. The train began to take up steam and “training for citizenship” and

“training for professional public service” merged in laying the groundwork for the

expert class. The citizen’s role was left waiting at the station for another day in

the sun. The social reformers, influenced by Taylor’s Scientific Management

principles, believed in “training for citizenship”, but having citizens involved in

government management processes was not part of the training. Citizen

participation beyond the rights of suffrage had not been thoroughly developed.

Leonard D. White noted that in the practice of public administration,

Hamiltonian doctrine ruled while people echoed Jeffersonian participatory

democracy. White’s perspective on modern American government reflects a

system of administration that strongly follows Hamiltonian ideals and ignores

28

popular preferences once set in motion by Jefferson.29

Follett championed a participative management style and believed that

change was synonymous with social interaction.30 In Follett’s “The Process of

Control”, she focused her attention on the relational aspects of people in

authority over workers (citizens). Follett persuaded her audiences to her way of

thinking that “self-generated control”31 was the only form of acceptable control.

Follett’s ideas helped to forge with democratic ideals of citizen participation and

self-government consistent with Dewey. However, her choice of words, I. e.

“process of control” and her emphasis on management in the bulk of her work

seem to obscure any implications for a new state promoting democratic

processes. The net effect of her influence seemed to fall on deaf ears until

Follett’s work was rediscovered decades later.

Other writers of Papers on the Science of Administration discuss

management processes but confined their arguments to business. The science

of administration that they contributed to was then thought to be applied to

government. The science of administration did not translate well to democratic

processes of government. Their arguments could not be extended to include

citizens as part of the governance processes. This fact may have contributed to

further removing citizen participation from public administration. As presidential

administrations and legislatures struggled throughout the years to become more

responsive to citizens in their rhetoric, presidential commissions were

established to fix government. The fix came in the form of efficiency, economy,

and effectiveness. As a result, active citizen involvement became more elusive.

Citizenship and Public Ser vice Theorists

Lippman and Schumpeter are among the few critics who relate citizen

participation and community to public service. They complemented each other’s

beliefs that citizens should leave governance to the “experts.” Lippman stated

that as citizens, “we are all in effect ‘outsiders’ . . . . every one of us is an

29

outsider to all but a few aspects of modern life, has neither the time, nor

attention, nor interest, nor the equipment for specific judgment. It is on the men

inside, working under conditions that are sound, that the daily administrations of

society must rest.”32

Schumpeter believed that citizens should maintain the responsibility of

keeping the electoral process working but should leave the responsibility of

administration to the experts. This appears to be a paternalistic treatment

towards citizens as if they were children--to be seen and not heard. He also

stated, “A well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition is another

necessity, and the electorate should exhibit self control and a large measure of

tolerance for difference of opinion.”33

Berelson observes three necessary levels of citizen involvement.34

Each level serves to soften the shock of disagreement, adjustment, and change.

The three levels of involvement are apathy, limited and moderate. He

considered the amount of present citizen participation adequate to meet the

requirements of a stable democracy. In his book Voting (1954), Berelson,

Lazarsfeld, and McPhee, “argue that the political system benefits when

individuals participate at different rates. He rejects the high standards for citizen

participation and competence set by traditional democratic theory; by these

standards, most citizens lack sufficient political interest, knowledge, principle,

and rationality.”35 William Kornhauser senses the discontent and apathy of

individuals, but knows community groups traditionally provide cohesiveness. He

believes citizen participation mediates the tension between the masses and the

elites.36

Terrence E. Cook and Patrick M. Morgan seem to be expressing the

same fears that the Federalists feared during the Founding Period. “It would be

sadly ironic if those who advocate escaping manipulation via participatory

democracy became, in the end, manipulators themselves for the good of the

people.”37 James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #10 that “the public good is

disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties.”38 Cook and Morgan feel that many

30

advocates of participatory democracy oppose government by experts. My

observation of this statement is that most proponents of participatory democracy

do not mention public administrators in their writings.

Critics of Theorists/Practices

Neil Riemer blames the modern liberal democrats for losing faith in the

common people and the common good, thus charging them with an elitist point

of view. “They pay lip service to popular government, but they really mean

representative government; they are very suspicious of a greater measure of

participatory democracy.”39 This may be a critique of pluralism and the

proponents of special interests. However, Riemer proposes his own form of

popular democracy. He stresses the importance of democratic and

constitutional principles for future democratic political order. He adds religious

and scientific tenets to his proposals for the future of democracy. It is my belief

that Riemer stretches the meaning of the Constitution in his proposals.

Clarke E. Cochran believes our troubles stem from individualism. “The

heart is lonely because autonomous individualism teaches that each person is to

make himself, to define himself, and to form and live his own moral and spiritual

principles.”40 He feels pluralism must be part of the theory of political community

for the value of diversity. He explains that interest-group pluralism is a variance

from the norm. Cochran identifies commitment and responsibility as

components of the kind of character needed for community governance.

Robert A. Dahl seems to capture the tension and confusion of what

should constitute citizen participation. His is an elitist point of view. He uses

Locke and Rousseau to weld two different principles of citizenship into one. On

the one hand the principle is universal and yet is limiting. He states that: “Every

person subject to a government and its laws has an unqualified right to be a

member of the demos (i.e., a citizen).”41 The tension between the elitist group

and the common man exemplifies itself in this dual principle. This limiting

31

principle was the intention of the Founders and can be applied to the Federal

Service. It set the norm for public service. A public servant is considered to be a

citizen with full rights and privileges; however, the public servant is limited in

exercising full participation in political activities by the Hatch Act. Dahl claims

that citizens are barred three times from maximum participation because of the

majority of the people’s limited resources, their apathy, and Madison’s

constitutional checks and balances.42

Dahl perceived that the tensions between pluralism and democracy

continue to exist. John Stuart Mill, a champion for individual involvement, helped

to set the norm for this tension. According to Dahl, Mill “undermined his own

argument for universal inclusion.”43 As Stein Rokkan remarked, “Votes count,

but often organizational resources decide.”44 However, Charles Merriam, a

liberal scholar, viewed community power as an effective measure to control their

leaders.45

Hugh Miller remembered the participant “who urged that we put the public

back into the public administration we profess.”46 “The demos itself has been

ignored if not polemicized into oblivion, and skepticism that the public interest

exists resonates widely, unfortunately.”47

Chester A. Newland speaks strongly about the effects of

“deinstitutionalization and partisan politicization . . . on the positive heritage from

our past. American public administration is acutely alienated from society,

bedeviled by complexity, and guided by limited knowledge and understanding.”48

Laurence J. O’Toole is not so hard on public administration but feels that it, too,

is in a developmental mode. “American public administration has retained an

orthodoxy of reform in its continuing series of attempts to reconcile the tensions

between democracy and bureaucracy.”49 O’Toole captures the sense of the not

quite yet emerging model for citizen involvement in American public

administration.

In 1980, Marilyn Gittell declared that the attempts at citizen involvement in

the sixties and seventies created a dismal legacy for the eighties. She asserted,

32

“advocates of citizen participation have more reason to despair now than they

did ten years ago.”50 Why this despair? One has to remember how the subject

of “citizen participation” inundated public administration and political science

literature in the sixties and the seventies. “Cit Pat” became synonymous with

“boring.” By 1978, citizen participation in practice as experienced by public

administrators proved to be ineffective, problematic, and a waste of time on the

part of public administrators.

Participator y Democrac y Today

On the contrary, Daniel Elazar sees the future of democracy in the light of

citizenship and community as “. . . a turning from the reified state--exclusive

sovereignty--centralism syndrome toward one of partnership, negotiation, and

sharing.”51 Gary Wamsley describes effective participation as “a real sharing of

power and taking a part in decision-making.”52

Perspectives emerging and converging on the horizon envision the future

of governance and citizen participation, through concepts such as: “Strong

Democracy,” “Agency Perspective,” “Agential Leader,” “Lingua Franca,”

“Community and Commitment,” and “Community of Knowledge.” Such concepts

have emerged from a different kind of literature. Benjamin R. Barber's A Strong

Democracy suggests a theory of participatory politics for a new age.53 Strong

Democracy is a "distinctly modern form of participatory democracy. It rests on

the idea of self-governing community of citizens who are united by homogeneous

interests . . . .”54

Barber grounded his theory on Thomas Jefferson's philosophy of

democratization--"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the

society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough

to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it

from them, but to inform their discretion."55 Thomas Jefferson, a strong advocate

of public education in America, believed that the way to empower citizens is to

33

educate them. Jefferson promoted knowledge to empower citizens.

Camilla Stivers grounds her idea of active citizenship on the concept of a

“community of knowledge.” In developing her thesis, "Toward a Community of

Knowledge: Active Citizens in the Administrative State," Stivers interprets

Wamsley's Agency Perspective:

"The agency perspective thus acts as a ‘city’ within which topractice active citizenship, as administrative discretion grounded inthe accountability that develops out of face-to-face interaction anddialogue, and situated by agency memory and contextual insight,expands the public space to include those the Founders left out solong ago."56

Stivers promotes a community of knowledge. "In such a community, all

members possess inherent knowledgeability and membership is open to anyone

who desires it.”57 Stivers extends her definition of the knowledge community.

"The notion of a knowledge community is an extension of the view that

knowledge has its genesis in restricted intersubjective agreements about

meaning, argued in Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigms."58 This is Peircean in

thought as it blends two very important concepts of Peirce’s definition of the

scientific method. The mind of the community is basic in establishing any

communication between individuals that help to build an epistemological basis

for discussion. The epistemological basis sets the stage for responsibility and

commitment to be felt by the participants. The language used and understood

by the community serves as a bonding tool for building trust and commitment.

This trust facilitates the process by which individuals in the expressions of their

ideas develop their community of ideas. The community of ideas then become

the stepping stones for taking action in achieving goals and objectives.

Cynthia McSwain and Orion White state that the public administrator must

serve as a "mediator of meaning." McSwain and White advocate creating a

lingua franca. In order for this to be accomplished in the public sector, the

primary objective would be to develop a lingua franca. This would be a

34

"fundamental task of creating a lingua franca by which value issues can be

discussed."59

Barber believes in a public language to transform into the strong

democratic conception of politics. A Strong Democracy "seeks to create a public

language that will help reformulate private interests in terms susceptible to public

accommodations;. . . ."60 To achieve a public language, Barber developed nine

functions of strong democratic talk:

1. The articulation of interests; bargaining and exchange.

2. Persuasion.

3. Agenda-setting.

4. Exploring mutuality.

5. Affiliation and affection.

6. Maintaining autonomy.

7. Witness and self-expression.

8. Reformulation and reconceptualization.

9. Community-building as the creation of public interests, common goods, and active citizens.61

Barber identifies three kinds of leadership for a strong democracy. They

are: transitional leadership on the model of the founder; facilitating leadership as

a foil for natural hierarchy and a guarantor of participatory institutions; and moral

leadership as a source of community.62 One can imply that Barber's strong

democracy means self-government. However, the three kinds of leadership

appear to be very much like Wamsley's agential leader. "An Agency Perspective

can only be functional for the political system if agents and principals hold one

another in mutual respect. Agents must respect their principal(s) whether that

means "the people", voters, the legislature, president, or some other

constitutional superior."63

Wamsley's Agency Perspective and the Agential Leader converge with

the ideas of Barber with regard to the democratic principle of active citizenship.

According to Wamsley, the Agential Perspective is not possible without politics in

35

pursuit of the common good and the presence of active citizenship.64 Wamsley

further believes that Agency can serve as a focal point of interest and

participation as well as an access point for citizen involvement in the policy

subsystem.65

The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) found

that citizen participation processes tend to help citizens feel closer to individual

programs.66

To reiterate the potential effectiveness of citizen participation, Barber's definition

of participation links citizen and community. "Participation . . . enhances the

power of communities and endows them with a moral force that nonparticipatory

rulership rarely achieves. Moreover, in enhancing the power of communities,

participation enlarges their scope of action."67

Barber seems to capture the essence of the potential power of citizen

participation. "Politics gives the power of human promise. For the first time the

possibilities of transforming private into public, dependency into

interdependency, conflict into cooperation, license into self-legislation, need into

love, and bondage into citizenship are placed in a context of participation."68

Barber's theory of strong democracy offers a different "and more vigorous

response: it envisions politics not as a way of life but as a way of living... ."69

However, something is lacking from this literature. It appears that these

perspectives still see the knowledge base for participation as being objectively

grounded, meaning that, in the end, the experts will potentially be able to trump

the citizens. The participation is focused on politics, and the mention of public

administration is minuscule. If the government agency or agent and citizen are

mentioned in the same writings, the focus is on the private role of citizens--the

attainment of public goods for one’s personal use, not for the greater good.

Dewey, on the other hand, following Peirce, sees the knowledge base as

developing from and being critically dependent upon community process for

validation. Hence, only citizens, through community process, can make

36

knowledge; and experts alone, without citizens, cannot ever really possess

knowledge. This is why an adequate model of democratic citizenship requires

something like Dewey’s thought as a foundation. The citizens experiences

become part of the knowledge base in the deliberation among public

administrators and citizens as part of the democratic process.

Gawthrop serves as a guide in developing Deweyan thought. He has

great faith in public administration to forge a bond between the individual citizen

and government as they did previously. Gawthrop called an alert to public

administrators to develop a model of citizenship in public administration by doing

the following:

1. Developing ethical values of “faith, trust, and loyalty” that public

administrators can inculcate into the relationships it develops with

individual citizens;

2. Developing the “soul of government” in order for citizens to renew

their faith in government; and

3. Exercising their energy to provide the ethical bases needed to

effect a “faith” in government.70

CONCLUSION

It is important to conduct a survey of democratic theory as it has been

understood, translated, and re-interpreted as it has evolved from just an ideal.

Interestingly, from the classical theorists of democracy to the present day, the

ideal of democracy has been to have an active, educated, participating citizenry.

This ideal has been thwarted by those theorists who have claimed that

participatory democracy is a myth. These theorists further claim that the myth

has been promulgated over the centuries as a way to allay any fears citizens

may have that their individual rights and sovereignty had been taken away.

Pateman alerts us in her book, Participation and Democratic Theory, to this fact

and presents the theorists who have been identified as either classical

37

democracy theorists, modern democracy theorists or contemporary democracy

theorists.

The understanding of citizen participation has developed in various ways

in the United States. Public institutions are discovering that citizen participation

develops communities of support. Dialogue between public administrators and

citizens binds them into a community. This dialogue is what Peirce describes as

a necessary key concept of his scientific method. The point must be made that

citizen participation exists at all levels of government but mostly at the local level.

Pateman gives credence to this point when she enlists Mill and Cole who state

that individuals ‘learn democracy’ at the local level.71 The range of citizen

involvement, effectiveness, and influence is broad from a "merely rubber stamp

effort to where citizens and policy makers feel citizens did affect the setting of

priorities."72 Daniel Elazar in his Postmodern Epoch, states: "A public is a

community that is . . . characterized by its civic character and political

expression."73 We can characterize the opportunity for citizen participation as

expanding democratic principles.

An educated citizenry is an absolute necessity for participatory democracy

to flourish. It is understood that this includes public administrators and

bureaucrats. Participatory democracy will flourish within public administration

institutions, as well as, within the citizenry. This can happen as “a community of

knowledge,” or “a lingua franca,” or “strong democratic talk” is developed and

becomes the foundation upon which public policy decisions are made. This is

the "best hope for our civilization's democratic aspirations."74

The ideas are converging for the most promising hope for the future

governance of American public administrative institutions. The best hope for the

future of American public administrative institutions are those ideas with vision.

The Agency Perspective, the Agential Leader, a Lingua Franca, Community and

Commitment, Strong Democracy, and a Community of Knowledge are those with

vision. According to Nancy Roberts, “Public deliberation, as a cornerstone of the

generative approach to general management in the public sector, is an emerging

38

form of social interaction used to set direction for government agencies.”75 Will

these be grounded as norms for the future of governance of the administrative

state? Barber concludes that there is one road to freedom and it lies in

democracy. He further implies that our best hope for the future, as two hundred

years ago, is for America to be America, self-governing, democratic, and free.76

What is Deweyan in thought today is reminiscent of the thinking of

Rousseau, Mill, and Cole when they each state that we “learn to participate by

participating and that feelings of political efficacy are more likely to be developed

in a participatory environment.”77 Pateman raises the question whether it is

necessary to have participation in all segments of society. Of course, Dewey

had already indicated a positive answer to that question to include religion.

Pateman argues in support of participation in all spheres as a way of forging the

meaning between the public and private role of individuals. Pateman claims that

it is this view that has been “lost” in the contemporary theory of democracy.78

Pateman concludes that, “we can still have a modern, viable theory of

democracy which retains the notion of participation at its heart.”79 Gawthrop

promotes his faith in public administration to rise up to the occasion in rescuing

and revitalizing the faith of citizens in government.

The glue that binds the whole of the developing American democracy is

the philosophy of John Dewey. His writings will fill in the gaps of the emerging

public administration literature on citizen involvement. John Dewey’s writings are

“a feel of the whole,” as expressed by Mary Schmidt80 and “a feeling for the

organism,” as expressed by Barbara McClintock81 in her research methods. The

strength of the developing American democracy can only occur when the

knowledge base of governance is grounded in the community. Governance from

this knowledge base legitimates the dialogue between citizens and public

administrators. John Dewey’s pragmatism links citizenship and community with

public administration in the governance of our developing American Democracy.

39

1. Judith V. May. Citizen Participation: A Review of the Literature. Berkeley,California: University of California, at Davis, Institute of Governmental Affairs, Summer,1968, p. iv.

2. Ibid., p. iv.

3. Carole Pateman. Participation and Democratic Theory. New York, New York:Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 2.

4. Ibid., p. 3. From Schumpeter’s book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy(1943).

5. Ibid., p. 6.

6. Ibid., p. 8.

7. Ibid., p. 10.

8. Ibid., p. 13.

9. Ibid., p. 20.

10. Ibid., p. 21.

11. Ibid., p. 21.

12. Ibid., p. 36.

13. Ibid., p. 42.

14. Ibid., p. 1.

15. Ibid., p. 1.

16. Ibid., p. 4.

17. Ibid., p. 9.

18. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

Endnotes

40

19. John D. Montgomery. Bureaucrats and People: Grassroots Participation in ThirdWorld Development. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988,p. xiii.

20. Ibid., p. xii.

21. Ibid., p. 31.

22. Pateman, p. 67.

23. Ibid., p. 67.

24. Larry M. Lane and James Wolf. Chapter 5: “The Search for Commitment andCommunity in the Federal Service,” The Human Resource Crises in the Public Sector:Rebuilding the Capacity to Govern. Westport, CT: 1990, p. 126.

25. May, p. 39.

26. Ibid., p. 29.

27. Chester A. Newland. Public Administration and Community: Realism in thePractice of Ideals. Public Administration Service, November, 1984, p. 12.

28. Ibid., p. 10.

29. Lynton K. Caldwell. The Administrative Theories of Hamilton and Jefferson:Their Contribution to Thought on Public Administration. Second Edition, New York:Holmes and Meier, 1988, p. ix.

30. Elliot M. Fox and L. Urwick. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers ofMary Parker Follett. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., Second Edition, 1982, p. 1.

31. Mary Parker Follett. “The Process of Control,” The final lecture in a series atLondon School of Economics, 1932, p. 168.

32. Carol S. Weissert. “Citizen Participation in the American Federal System,”Washington, D.C.: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, August,1979, SuDoc#Y3, p. 31.

33. Ibid., p. 31.

34. Ibid., p. 33.

35. May, p. 2.

36. Weissert, p. 39.

41

37. Terrence E. Cook and Patrick M. Morgan. Participatory Democracy. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1971, p. 33.

38. Michael Loyd Chadwick, Ed. The Federalist. “Securing the Public Good andPrivate Rights Against the Dangers of Faction,” by James Madison, p. 45.

39. Neil Riemer. The Future of the Democratic Revolution: Toward a More PropheticPolitics. New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1984, p. 89.

40. Clarke E. Cochran. Character, Community, and Politics. University, Alabama:The University of Alabama Press, 1982, p. 3.

41. Robert A. Dahl. Democracy, Liberty, and Equality. Oxford, OX: NorwegianUniversity Press, distributed by Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 209.

42. Pateman, p. 9.

43. Dahl, p. 210.

44. Ibid., p. 243.

45. David M. Ricci. Community Power and Democratic Theory. New York: RandomHouse, 1971, p. 45.

46. Hugh Miller. “Democratic Discourse for Public Administration,” Dialogue. GreenBay, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin, 1988, p. 16.

47. Ibid., p. 15.

48. Chester A. Newland. Public Administration and Community: Realism in thePractice of Ideals. Public Administration Service, November, 1984, pp. 5-6.

49. Laurence J. O’Toole, Jr. “American Public Administration and The Idea ofReform,” Administration & Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, August, 1984, p. 141.

50. Marilyn Gittell. Limits to Citizen Participation: The Decline of CommunityOrganizations. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980, p. 241.

51. Daniel Elazar. Exploring Federalism. “Will the Postmodern Epoch Be an Era ofFederalism,” University, Alabama: University of Alabama, 1987, Ch. 7, p. 265.

52. Gary L. Wamsley. “Imaging the Public Organization as an Agency and thePublic Administrator as Agential Leader,” Virginia Polytechnic Institute and StateUniversity, April, 1988, p. 22.

53. Benjamin R. Barber. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 6.

42

54. Ibid., p. 23.

55. Ibid., p. 6.

56. Camilla Stivers. Toward a Community of Knowledge: Active Citizens in theAdministrative State, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, 98505, April,1988, p. 37.

57. Ibid., p. 24.

58. Ibid., p. 24.

59. Orion F. White, Jr., and Cynthia J. McSwain. “The Phoenix Project: Raising aNew Image of Public Administration from the Ashes of the Past,” in Henry D. Kass andBayard L. Catron (eds.) Images and Identities in Public Administration. Newbury Park,CA: Sage Publishing Co., 1990, pp. 23-59.

60. Barber, p. 119.

61. Ibid., p. 178.

62. Ibid., p. 239.

63. Gary L. Wamsley. “Imaging the Public Organization as an Agency and thePublic Administrator as Agential Leader,” Virginia Polytechnic Institute and StateUniversity, April, 1988, p. 22.

64. Gary L. Wamsley. “The Agency Perspective: Public Administrators as AgentialLeaders,” Refounding Public Administration. Newbury Park, California: 1990, pp. 130-131.

65. Ibid., p. 150.

66. Weissert, p. 10.

67. Barber, p. 8.

68. Ibid., p. 120.

69. Ibid., p. 118. I found his comment regarding communitarians interesting;therefore, I refrained from using that term in this paper. Here is a continuation of thequote cited: “There they are secure from the manipulation of those boguscommunitarians who appeal to the human need for communion and for a purposehigher than private, material interests only in order to enslave humankind.”

70. Gawthrop, pp. 210-215.

43

71. Pateman, p. 38.

72. Weissert, p. 10.

73. Daniel Elazar. “Will the Postmodern Epoch Be an Era of Federalism,” ExploringFederalism. Ch. 7, p. 265.

74. Barber, p. 245.

75. Nancy Roberts, “Public Deliberation: An Alternative Approach to Crafting Policyand Setting Direction,” PAR: Public Administration Review. Washington, D.C.,March/April, 1997, Volume 57, No. 2., pp. 124-131.

76. Barber, p. xvi.

77. Pateman, p. 105.

78. Ibid., p. 110.

79. Ibid., p. 111.

80. Mary R. Schmidt. “Grout: Alternative Kinds of Knowledge and Why They AreIgnored,” PAR: Public Administration Review. Washington, D.C., November/December,1993, Volume 53, No.6, pp. 525-530.

81. Evelyn Fox Keller. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of BarbaraMcClintock. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1983, p. 198.